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A Brief Survey of the History of Chinese Translations of the Hebrew Bible1

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A Brief Survey of the History of Chinese Translations of the Hebrew Bible1 A Brief Survey of the History of Chinese Translations of the Hebrew Bible1 Yiyi Chen Peking University Since the publication of two articles about myself,2 scholars and laymen alike, who now know a little about me, have been asking me about the need for another Chinese translation of the Hebrew Bible. While in my mind the answer to this question has always been a positive one, the time frame in which I would embark on such an effort has been indefinitely postponed due to my personal situation. Nevertheless, in order to justify my answer to such a question, a brief survey of the history of Chinese translations of the Hebrew Bible is inevitable. Although there are a couple of excellent books written on this topic,3 such a task would be much more difficult and unimaginable without the Internet and the plethora of articles written on this topic and disseminated among Christian sponsored online forums. Most if not all of these articles are written in Chinese (either in simplified or traditional characters), and some of these are written in meticulously detail about one or another version of the translation.4 These Internet sources are quoted in detail in their respective places in this article.5 The only relatively comprehensive survey written in English addressing this topic is slightly outdated since it was finished in 1975.6 The intention of this paper is to write an updated brief survey in the English language, so that a more systematic answer can be provided to interested readers and 1 I owe much to Professor Youde Fu, who invited me to the International Symposium of Inter-Religious Dialogue: Confucianism, Judaism and Christianity held in Jinan, China. The symposium provided not only a platform to discuss the issues with scholars in this field, but also the opportunity to get published in a peer-reviewed English language journal so that more scholars in the English-speakingworld can have access to the content of this article. I think the theme of the symposium matches this survey, since any serious effort at translating the Hebrew Bible to Chinese is destined to be an “inter-cultural dialogue,” if not an “inter-religious” one. 2 "Students Goal is Chinese Translation of Hebrew Bible," Cornell Chronicle, Nov. 21, 1996, Ithaca, NY; "An Unlikely Expert Bringing the Hebrew Bible to the Chinese," The Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct. 31, 1997, Washington, D.C. 3 Chiu Wai Boon, Tracing Bible Translation—A History of the Translation of Five Modern Chinese Versions of the Bible, Hong Kong: China Graduate School of Theology, 1993 （赵维本，《译经溯源──现代五大中文圣经翻 译史》，香港：中国神学研究院， 1993, the book contains by far the most comprehensive information, although its emphasis is the translation of the New Testament; Huirong Chen, A Brief History of the Chinese Translation of the Bible, Hong Kong: New Chinese Bible Translation Society, 1986 （陈惠荣，《中文圣经翻译小史》，香港：中文 圣经新译会，1986）。 4 So far, the author has managed to find one such online article written in English, the URL as of February of 2005 was http://www.amityfoundation.org/ANS/Articles/ans98/ans98.1/98_1_3.htm. The article is an English summary of an article written in Chinese: 刘重明，“圣经有那些中文译本，”《天风》，1997 年第 12 期，pp. 40-41。 (Chongming Liu, “Different Versions of Chinese Translations of the Bible,” Tian Feng, December 1997). However, as with many online resources, the fluidity of the location is always problematic – although the above website is still available, the exact article cannot be located as of May 2005. Sample websites written in Chinese are: http://www.biblesociety-tw.org/bmag/bmag13/bcome13.htm; http://www.biblesociety-tw.org/cb.htm; http://www.ctestimony.org/0203/hysj.htm. 5 Particularly, the following Internet articles should be noted (reachable from within China as of May 2005). http://www.ctestimony.org/0203/zwsj.htm, a survey by an anonymous author written in Chinese. 6 Hubert W. Spillett, A catalogue of Scriptures in the languages of China and the Republic of China, London: British and Foreign Bible Society, 1975. I was not able to obtain a copy of this book in a timely fashion during the preparation of this paper, since it is owned by only eighteen US and European libraries based on an OCLC search on Feb. 14, 2005. 1 so that hopefully more international attentions can be drawn to this matter. This survey is intended to be a comprehensive account of the significant efforts translating the Hebrew Bible into Chinese either directly from Hebrew or from other Western languages. Although inevitably many of the translations also include the Greek New Testament, this is not discussed here. Translation efforts that include only books from the New Testament are not surveyed in this article either. (1) The earliest record about a Chinese translation of the Hebrew Bible is found on a stone stele dating back to 781 CE. The stele was excavated in the city of Xi’an in 1625. The stele was erected by Nestorian Christians, who started to live and develop in China’s capital Changan (today’s Xi’an) in 635 C.E.. 1,756 Chinese characters were found on the stele, together with 70 Syriac words. The Chinese name of the stele is formally translated as “the Memorial of the Propagation in China of the Luminous Religion from Daqin” (大秦景教流行中國碑, Daqin being the Chinese term for the Roman Empire). Among the characters on the stele, we find Chinese expressions such as “real canon” and “translating the Bible.”7 So far, however, no preserved Bible translations of this period as mentioned in the stele are to be found. Based on the information found in a Nestorian Church canon Zunjing (尊经) discovered at Dunhuang （敦煌）in 1907-08, translated books from the Hebrew Bible were Genesis, Exodus, the book of Psalms, the book of Zechariah, and the book of Hosea, among others. (2) The second earliest recorded translation of the Hebrew Bible in China, to be dated to late thirteenth century to early fourteenth century, was by Father John of Montecorvino. The information was gained from his own letters written in Latin, and the target language of translation is Mongolian, the language of the ruling people of China at that time, not exactly Chinese. No actual copies of this translation were found. (3) The famous Jesuit Matteo Ricci also attempted translating the Hebrew Bible in the late sixteenth century. However, the only record preserved down to today is his rendering of the ten commandments in Chinese. There is no evidence that he undertook the effort of translating the whole Hebrew Bible; many clues point in the 7 A picture of the stele is to be found in the official website of the National Museum of China (http://www.nmch.gov.cn/gb/collections/show2.jsp?id=5146). Since the stele was erected to celebrate the accomplishments of the Assyrian Church of the East in China, which is also referred to as the Nestorian Church, the stele is also called the “Nestorian Stele” or “Nestorian Stone.” An electronic version of the Chinese original text can be found at the official website of the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association (CBETA) (http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/cbeta/result/app/T54/2144_001.htm ), The stele text in English can be found in Charles F. Horne, ed., The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, (New York: Parke, Austin, & Lipscomb, 1917), Vol. XII, Medieval China, pp. 381-392. An Internet copy of the English translation together with the original introduction from Horne’s book can be found in “the Internet East Asian History Sourcebook” hosted at Fordham University (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/eastasia/781nestorian.html). 2 direction that only sections very useful for his missionary activities were translated to Chinese. (4) During late eighteenth century, Jesuit Louis de Poirot translated almost all the books of the Hebrew Bible to Chinese. However, the translation was based on the Vulgate. It never got published. The manuscript is preserved in the Beitang (北堂) Library in Beijing.8 (5) In 1807, Robert Morrison cooperated with W. C. Milne, both from London, finished translating several books of the Hebrew Bible into Chinese; in 1819, Morrison finished the rest of the Hebrew Bible by himself. The translation was published in 1823 at Malacca in Malaysia. (6) The English Baptist missionary and orientalist Joshua Marshman (1768-1837) translated the book of Genesis into Chinese, together with several New Testament books. These were published in 1822. (7) In 1840, a group of four people (Walter Henry Medhurst, Charles Gutzlaff, E. C. Bridgman, and John R. Morrison) cooperated to translate the Bible. The translation of the Hebrew part was done mostly by Gutzlaff from the Netherlands Missionary Society, with the exception that the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua were done by the group collectively. This translation is very famous due to its adoption by the revolutionary peasant leader Hong Xiuquan of the Taipingtianguo movement as the doctrines of the organization. Hong renamed the book slightly and added notations in many places to fit the needs of the movement.9 (8) In 1854, a new translation of the Hebrew Bible, prepared by Walter Henry Medhurst with the help of the Sinologist James Legge, was published. The translation was initiated by a missionary commission yet turned out to be a translation by a few people, due to separation into different sections because of theological differences. The translation was considered excellent Chinese writing, and it used plenty of Chinese philosophical terms, sacrificing accuracy based on the original Hebrew texts. (9) In 1862, the American Protestant missionary E. C. Bridgman (1801-1861) published a translation of the Hebrew Bible, characterized by the accuracy of the translation and its loyalty to the original Hebrew texts.
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